Networked-based communications of various kinds are known in the art and include, as one particularly well-known example, Internet-based communications. By such means a given call entity can contact one or more called entities and provide, receive, or exchange corresponding information and/or services. Existing facilities in this regard are highly flexible and have been leveraged in various ways to permit an almost limitless variety of call sessions to be established and supported as needed (where the expression call sessions will be understood to refer to all manner of communications exchanges including, but not limited to, voice-only and/or audio-only exchanges, still-image and/or video-only exchanges, audio-visual exchanges, and any of a wide variety of so-called multi-media sessions, to note but a few relevant examples in this regard).
In many cases, the entities engaged in such communications must establish some level of relationship with one or more other network entities in order to facilitate the call session itself and/or the availability of desired content and/or services. As one simple but relatively ubiquitous example in this regard, a calling party may need to first log-in with a given service provider before a call session will be honored and/or a request for particular content met. Such practices are often viewed as important or critical to ensuring the economic or proprietary integrity of such practices and approaches. Unfortunately, in some application settings, a repeated and/or intrusive need to attend to such exchanges can interrupt the user's experience with detrimental effects.
As one attempt to meet such concerns while nevertheless continuing to support the underlying rationale and approach described above, federated identities have been proposed. Such federation can comprise, for example, the virtual union of a network entity's user information that is stored, for example, across multiple distinct identity management systems. Such data can be joined together by, for example, the use of a pre-agreed set of attributes that singly or multiply unambiguously identify the entity in question used by multiple distinct identity management systems. Examples of such attributes include a user name, a pseudonym, and a temporary or permanent platform identifier. Such federation can also comprise, for example, the process of extending a user's authenticated identity and/or status with at least one trusted entity across multiple network entities, information technology systems, enterprises, and/or domains. The so-called Single Sign-On (SSO) effort, such as that supported in Liberty Alliance, is one example of how federation can be used. Note that such efforts usually require specific protocol support, such as the protocols defined by the Liberty Alliance to support their version of SSO.
By such an approach, a given network entity may, for example, gain transparent access to one or more benefits from a given content or service provider based upon the latter's reliance and/or use of information regarding that network entity via the use of such federation. Though constituting a clear improvement over past unfederated practices, present teachings in this regard are not, unfortunately, sufficiently comprehensive. Serious questions and issues remain regarding how to implement such federation-based benefits to better provide for a suitably scalable, efficient, cost effective, and leveragable approach.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention. It will further be appreciated that certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. It will also be understood that the terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions with respect to their corresponding respective areas of inquiry and study except where specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.